Lastly, the marvels of his arms have bewitched the young, while teaching us to worship brute force. His unexampled fortune has left to the overweening conceit of every ambition the hope of arriving at the point which he attained.
And yet this man, so popular through the roller which he had passed over France, was the mortal enemy of equality and the greatest organizer of aristocracy within democracy.
I cannot acquiesce in the false praises with which men have insulted Bonaparte, while trying to justify everything in his conduct; I cannot surrender my reason nor go into ecstasies before that which arouses my horror or my pity.
If I have succeeded in conveying what I have felt, there will remain of my portrait one of the leading figures in history; but I have adopted no part of the fantastic creature composed of lies: lies which I saw born, lies which, taken at first for what they were, passed in time to the state of truth through the infatuation and the imbecile credulity of mankind. I refuse to be a gull and to fall into a fit with admiration. I strive to paint persons conscientiously, without taking from them what they have, without giving them what they have not. If success were esteemed as innocence; if, debauching even posterity, it loaded it with its chains; if, a future slave, begotten by a slavish past, that suborned posterity became the accomplice of whosoever should have triumphed: where would be the right, where would be the reward of sacrifices? Good and evil becoming only relative qualities, all morality would be blotted out from human actions.
That is the difficulty which is caused to the impartial writer by a brilliant renown; he keeps it on one side as much as he can, in order to lay bare the truth; but the glory returns like a golden haze and instantly covers the picture.
*
In order not to admit the diminution of territory and power which we owe to Bonaparte, the present generation consoles itself by imagining that he has given back to us in illustriousness what he has taken from us in strength:
"Are we not from this time forward," it asks, "famed in the four quarters of the earth? Is not a Frenchman feared, remarked, sought out, known on every shore?"
But were we placed between those two conditions: either immortality without power, or power without immortality? Alexander made the Greek name known to the universe; none the less he left them four empires in Asia; the language and civilization of the Hellenes extended from the Nile to Babylon and from Babylon to the Indus. At his death, his ancestral Kingdom of Macedon, far from being diminished, had increased a hundred-fold in force. Bonaparte made us known on every shore; commanded by him, the French threw Europe so low at their feet that France still prevails by her name, and that the Arc de l'Étoile can rise up without appearing a puerile trophy; but, before our reverses, that monument would have stood as a witness, instead of being only a record. And yet, had not Dumouriez, with raw recruits, given the foreigner his first lessons[381], Jourdan won the Battle of Fleurus[382], Pichegru conquered Belgium and Holland[383], Hoche crossed the Rhine[384], Masséna triumphed at Zurich[385], Moreau at Hohenlinden[386]: all exploits most difficult to obtain and preliminary to others? Bonaparte made a corporate whole of these scattered successes; he continued them, he caused those victories to shine forth: but without those first wonders, would he have obtained the last? He was raised above all things only when reason with him was executing the inspirations of the poet.